


miscummunication

by arcanawildcard, clairelutra



Series: Shuann Week 2020 [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Cultural Differences, Developing Relationship, Dubious Consent, F/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Pheromones, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23524132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanawildcard/pseuds/arcanawildcard, https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairelutra/pseuds/clairelutra
Summary: In which Akira thinks he's in a sickfic, Ann thinks she's in a PWP, and they struggle to come to an understanding.ON HIATUS
Relationships: Amamiya Ren/Takamaki Ann, Kurusu Akira/Takamaki Ann, Persona 5 Protagonist/Takamaki Ann
Series: Shuann Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1692796
Comments: 25
Kudos: 74





	miscummunication

**Author's Note:**

> SO it be [shuann week](https://shuannweek.tumblr.com/).
> 
> i was gonna try to participate normally, but never in my life have i successfully participated in any ship week, SO INSTEAD: i'm clearing out (or trying to clear out) my fairly sizeable backlog of drafts that languish in partial-completeness hell.
> 
> one day... one day i'll get back to weekly updates. lol.
> 
> ~~no, the title isn't a typo~~

The thing was, Akira smelled _safe._

He'd _always_ smelled safe, right from the second she met him that rainy day in April. Like an alpha, definitely, but mellow and subtle, like old velvet and late nights with traces of fog and _snow,_ silent and clean. Even the scent of want that joined it when he laid eyes on her was simply... present. Indefinably warm, indefinably soothing.

And she wasn't really a _fan_ of the idea that you could tell exactly what any person was like by their scent alone, but it was undeniable that your nose could give you a very solid clue as to their character. That Akira turned out to be a pretty chill and stand-up guy came as exactly no surprise to her.

(Heck, how the rumors even _started_ was a way bigger mystery. Did anyone even _inhale_ around him?)

And that sense of safety was probably why she was here, standing outside of Leblanc while her heat-haze was making everything blurry and scary and strange. Her parents weren't home, Shiho wasn't around to snuggle, and she was lonely.

She could have gone to Makoto or Ryuji, but...

Makoto was clean. So very, very _clean._ Sweet and floral and ironed clothing and mechanical pencils and sunny mornings and... _clean._ It left Ann second-guessing herself, wondering if throwing her messes into Makoto's space was really the wisest idea, if being stupid around her wasn't the same as knocking over her neat stacks of flawlessly executed assignments—bothersome and laughable. To go to her with something as unavoidably _unclean_ as a heat felt... wrong somehow.

And Ryuji? Foxy. Blatant. _Rank._ Comforting in his honesty, but crass and careless and her pride and self-respect refused to give him this kind of ammunition. _Refused._

But Akira...

He was _safe._ Soothing. Surprisingly reliable. Wanted her. Teased her and snarked at her, but never unkindly and never too far. Supportive, but willing to tell her when it was time to stop.

Safe.

_Safe._

So here she was, feeling flushed and dazed as she stared at the glass door, wondering what she should do next. Should she have texted him...? Maybe she should go in and ask Boss? Maybe...

"...Ann?"

Oh. There he was.

Just getting home from school, his school uniform dark against the bright and chaotic backstreet.

"Hey," she greeted sheepishly. "Sorry for just dropping in. I forgot to text."

(Not precisely true. She'd just dismissed the idea as she locked up the house behind her, figuring she'd be there in ten minutes anyway, what was the difference, even?)

Worry was painting his scent smoky and green, even as his face remained largely impassive. "What are you doing here?"

"I was lonely," she said, then paused to admire how the mid-afternoon sunlight caught in his hair.

Shiny. Soft. She wanted to touch it, pet it, run her fingers through it. She wanted to...

Wait. She'd been talking, hadn't she...? Right.

"I wanted to see you," she finished—with an admirable degree of certainty, if she did say so herself.

(Everything was dreamy and shivery right now, and her memory felt misted over. Whether she'd _wanted_ to see him was fading out of importance in the face of his actual presence. Akira made everything okay. He always did.)

His worry was so strong that she almost couldn't detect the boy underneath. "See... _me."_

She nodded, the motion feeling distant and slow. "You always make me feel better," she said, because there was really no reason _not_ to say it. Even just seeing him here was like drinking peace. That aching itchy emptiness in her was easing away the longer she breathed him in.

His chest rose and fell in a carefully paced sigh, scent spiking in one of those odd, in between emotions that she could never put a good word to. This one smelled like burning cedar. "You're supposed to be at home, remember?"

Was she? She let her head hang to the side—it suddenly felt too heavy. "But you weren't there."

He paused, then sighed again, this one much more tight and exasperated than measured, and pinched the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. His scent was much more 'burning' than 'cedar' now, swirling in her throat and warming her from head to toe. "Let's... get you back."

Somewhere in there, there was a rejection. And it hurt—hurt almost as much as being alone had hurt—but 'getting her back' seemed to involve Akira laying an infinitely gentle hand between her shoulder blades as he guided her to Leblanc's door, and Ann was effectively distracted, the touch skittering cool-hot electricity down her spine.

"Wait here a minute," he instructed once they'd entered the empty establishment, and, helplessly caught on that soothing rumble of a command, Ann just nodded.

* * *

Despite reputations and appearances and all that, Akira actually _did_ know how to care for an omega in heat.

Inaba was the kind of small where just about everyone had taken care of an omega neighbor or friend or classmate at some point, regardless of pack standing or secondary gender. Both he and his neighbor there had had absentee parents, and he'd been bringing her his dirty laundry and making her food during her bi-yearly heats since they were 13. It was just the done thing.

Things were different in the city, though.

Strange and distant, with suppressants being the norm instead of school absences that everyone turned a sympathetic blind eye to. Omegas wore scent-muting perfume during the preceding week instead of accumulating desks' worth of gifted snacks and plush toys. The state of being in heat itself being treated as mystical and... _degrading_ somehow, instead of just an inconvenient fact of life.

Almost every other person here smelled _stray,_ too, and those that didn't carried an odd aura of superiority about them, like having a pack was a privilege or something.

It was strange.

And maybe it made sense that caution was safer in a city as impersonal and _dirty_ as Tokyo, but apparently that meant that nobody here had a clue how to deal with something as basic as a heat—at least, not to go by the locker room talk. Hearing his fellow alphas joke about how 'they'd know _exactly_ what to do' with a vulnerable omega was just chilling.

...That said.

 _Ann Takamaki_ saying that the reason she'd wandered all the way to Leblanc in a heat-haze was because _that's where he was_ while she smelled like... like _that_ —like rain and scorched dust and something that had the hairs of his arms standing on end—had pushed about thirty buttons Akira hadn't even known he had.

Damn it.

(It wasn't that he had a crush so much as it was that she was just _gorgeous_ and _sweet_ and the kind of openly trusting that warmed him right down to the marrow. The kind of omega ideal that had the instinct half of his brain wide awake, nudging him to press-take- _claim_ every time he so much as saw her smile. _Make sure she's yours before anyone else gets there first,_ said the biology of every single alpha within eye- and earshot of her—him included.

Ann Takamaki made Akira understand where that skin-crawling locker room talk came from, and he _hated_ it.)

He'd just... get her home, then call Makoto. Or Haru. Or both. People who didn't particularly care whether or not they saw Ann Takamaki naked under normal circumstances and therefore would be much less affected.

Except. Would _Makoto_ know how to care for an omega in heat? Both she and her sister were alphas, right? And Haru, an only-child beta who'd been raised by hired staff...

Yusuke, also a beta, could hardly be trusted to care for himself, much less anyone else. Ditto Futaba, for all that she was an omega and knew more or less what it was like. Morgana, wherever he'd wandered off to, didn't have opposable thumbs. Ryuji _maybe_ (wasn't his mom an omega?), but he wouldn't be much better off than Akira in this situation.

_Goddamn it._

Well, regardless of who ended up taking care of her (it really _was_ going to be him, wasn't it), she'd need supplies.

He'd just done his laundry, but his bedsheet hadn't been washed in a couple of weeks, so he grabbed that and stuffed it in his schoolbag after emptying out his books. His quilt was the fluffiest thing in his room, but it was too big to take, so he left it. Pillow... Yeah, that would work. Hopefully.

His sleep clothes and his hoodie joined the sheet and pillow—sad offerings, but they might do the trick.

Food-wise... Sojiro would kill him if he stole ingredients from the cafe and he didn't want to risk stopping at a store on their way back, so he'd just have to hope for the best with the Takamaki fridge.

Drugstore painkillers from the Metaverse supply stash (anti-inflammatories took the edge off), those extra protein shakes (protein was important), candy (sugar rarely went awry with Ann in general)...

That was the point at which he really had to admit to himself that he was stalling.

Time to find Ann and hope for the best.

(This was going to be hell.)

* * *

His first taste of hell was the cool, rose-ish melancholy surrounding Ann when he walked back down into the cafe and the way every fiber of his _being_ lurched with the need to fix it.

His second taste of hell was the sugar-cookie welcome that blossomed through it at the sight of him, because apparently _he_ was the thing that fixed it.

The train was all sorts of other kinds of hell—from the way she tucked herself in close to him and radiated fever-heat in the packed carriage to the way he could count her eyelashes up that close—but they both made it to her house... _more or less_ alive in the end.

(There was a storm brewing in the far distance and there was a storm brewing under his skin and there was a storm well in progress through Ann's heat pheromones, just _begging_ for him to duck in and taste the rain-wind-electricity she promised. He wasn't sure which was going to kill him first, but he suspected it was going to be the last one.)

Of course, then they stepped in the door and Ann, scared and fragile and smelling like monsoon season, caught the corner of his sleeve and whispered, "Stay? Please? I... I don't want to be alone."

...Well. The reaper had gotten here a little quicker than he'd thought it would.

There was probably something witty he could say in reply to that, but he'd think of it later. Once he'd had the chance to scrape his wits off the walls and found a functioning replacement heart. His current one seemed to be failing him.

"...I'll stay," he promised, the words coming out in a rumble he hadn't intended.

(He could have— _should_ have said something much more reasonable and ambiguous like 'I won't leave you alone,' or 'I'll make sure you're okay' (both of which would allow for him leaving her with someone else she trusted, someone who was a better, more trustworthy choice of caretaker), but her pleading gaze seemed to have dissolved any and all forms of higher reason.)

The sight of her glassy eyes shining in relief and gratitude did him in worse.

He frantically cast about for something to ease the haze, to make this lighter on both of them—ibuprofen. He'd brought that. She needed to eat before she could take it, though, so he cleared his throat and managed to ask, "Have you eaten recently?" in a... _relatively_ even voice.

"Mnn..." she said, blinking at his mouth for a long moment as she processed, then she shook her head and mumbled, "Dunno."

Right then. He shoved the backpack in the general direction of her stomach. "I'll make you something. Go lie down."

(He wanted her under him, on top of him, beside him, all tangled up in him; wanted to take her on the floor, in a bed, against a wall—and the longer he breathed her in, the more he _desperately needed a bucket of ice water to dunk his head in._ )

She accepted the bag, blinking in confusion now.

"The clothes are in there," he said, then resisted the urge to clear his throat as the implications of that finally hit him. "I didn't have much, but they should still help."

(She was going to be using _his clothes._ It didn't mean a thing, didn't mean a thing that it was _his_ clothes she was going to snuggle up with even if it was _him_ she'd gone to—that didn't mean a thing, because if it _meant something,_ he'd be done for, and he couldn't betray her trust like that, he _couldn't._ )

Still looking very, very confused, she nodded slowly and headed for the stairs.

Akira stayed long enough to make sure she wasn't going to collapse on her way up, then went to go investigate the fridge.

* * *

Ann's confusion lasted until she opened the bag, and then it flipped over into pure bafflement.

Why had Akira given her his clothes? And his pillow? And a... bedsheet?

Wasn't he supposed to want her wearing _less?_ She wanted her wearing less. She wanted her wearing _him_ , not her clothes.

They smelled really good, though. _Really_ good. She got as far as peeling off her shirt and switching it for the worn black top before she forgot what she was supposed to be doing and flopped over sideways on her bed to bury her nose in the sleeves.

Velvet and foggy nights and old musk and silent snow and residual warmth, and it _settled_ something in her, something she didn't even realize was unsettled. Like seeing Akira again, except... deeper. More carnal. Just instead of winding her up, it wound her _down,_ unspooling the heat in her abdomen into something molten and lax.

She closed her eyes, intending just to rest a bit before Akira came back... and dozed off almost immediately.

* * *

Time slipped through her fingers, sweetly weighted, until she heard the door to her room click. She forced herself to sit up at the sound, stretching the ache out of her limbs, her ears pop to the sound of rain on the window panes and her overheated skin prickling at the cool air.

Akira was in the doorway, holding two glasses of... something. He was still and inscrutable even as the scent of his _want_ flooded the room, dense and sharper than she'd ever smelled it before.

She purred a welcome, the hum of arousal in her system tightening pleasantly up once again. _Finally..._

After a moment of hesitation, he took it, picking his way across her messy floor to her, but instead of setting the glasses down on her bedside table and and then crawling on top of her, he held one of those glasses in front of her nose—the one filled with a thick beige substance. "Drink."

Mystified, she took it.

A sip revealed it to be something that was like a milkshake, but also kind of not (banana and peanut butter...? Thick and rich and creamy and sweet with an odd, slight grittiness she couldn't place), but very delicious either way.

...It wasn't a knot. Or even foreplay to a knot. Or even foreplay to foreplay to a knot.

Still! The day Ann looked a gift horse (or milkshake) in the mouth was the day she missed out on a horse (or milkshake), so she drank.

Akira was digging through the bag he'd given her, fishing out a pill bottle she hadn't seen in her own perusal and opening it up. "The rice is still cooking, but that should work in the meantime," he said as he tapped out a few of the pills.

"Work for... what?" she finally had to ask, staring first at the two little red pills he was offering her, then up at his impassive gaze.

A long moment of silence stretched between them, then he said, "Ibuprofen helps reduce fever, and it usually makes heats a little easier to deal with too, but you need to eat before you take it."

"So it's like... a suppressant?" That most _definitely_ wasn't what she'd expected from this visit. That was the _opposite_ of what she'd expected from this visit. She'd expected—

His own confusion was starting to leak into his scent, wintry and chemical. "...No. It just makes it less uncomfortable. No suppressing."

"...Oh."

She still didn't quite get it, but she accepted the pills and then the second glass (just water), and took them.

Just as motherly as her old caretaker would have been, he tugged the half-drunk water glass from her fingers and set it on the bedside table, then took the pillow from the bag and laid it next to hers. He picked up the edge of her blanket, murmuring, "C'mon, time to get some sleep."

Feeling very much like she'd missed an important memo somewhere, she let him tuck her in—only realizing he planned to _leave her_ when he took a step away.

She latched onto his wrist, panic bubbling in her gut. He couldn't leave her _now._

"I'm just going to check on the food," he said, carefully soothing. He rested that hand on the top of her head, petting her like a cat, then, with a slight smile that was fond enough to melt her bones, he added, "The medicine will take a bit to kick in. Take a nap while you wait."

It was another rejection, but that smile stemmed the hurt before it could even start.

Reluctantly, she let go of him. "...'Kay."

He smoothed her bangs, an approving rumble in the back of his throat, and it shut down all of her unease and thought processes in one fell swoop.

He settled the gifted pillow in her arms, and it was the most luxurious thing in the world to wrap her arms around it, breathe in the residual smell of his hair, and let sleep claim her—for real this time.

* * *

She drifted back to consciousness like driftwood in the tide, and the closer she got to shore, the more she noticed how sweaty and sticky and gross she felt.

_Good morning, world._

Or... good evening?

The world outside her open window was dark, the rush of rain painting everything misty-cool as her desk fan pulled more damp air into the room.

She blinked at it, fixed on the sparkle of the streetlight through the fat droplets, the scent of damp earth and the way it filled the back of her throat.

It was raining, and the window was open.

Why was the window open?

She looked around and found Akira was in the room, seated at her desk with textbooks stacked around him and a notepad open in front of him.

Even with the fan running, the scent of the whole room was suffused in the warmth of his want, gentle and sensual, and for the nth time today(?), that sick, off-kilter feeling in her gut transformed into needy heat.

She tried for a greeting and ended up with a noise between a sigh, a hiss, and a groan.

"Awake?" he murmured, toe-curlingly rough around the edges, and she lost a few seconds to just floating in the feeling it gave her.

Distraction aside, the question forced her to take stock of herself. Hot shivers from his voice, a collection of slick between her legs that should have been _really super gross_ but was only a little bit gross while her body was insisting it was going to come in handy when he finally decided to shuck his clothes and get inside her, half-dried sweat soaking the shirt he'd given her, brain that was still half-haze...

"Mngfn," she grunted, which roughly translated to, _yes, and I regret it._ Trying for actual real words next, she said, "'Ow l'ng...?"

"About five hours," said Akira, who apparently had 'translation from sleep-drunk omega to coherent omega' in his already impressive skillset. "You were tired."

"Mmm..." she agreed, then heaved a yawn, stretching and wincing. What had _possessed_ her to wear a bra to bed?

She arched until she could reach the back and unhooked it, then pulled her arms out of her shirtsleeves so she could remove the offending garment.

"How are you fee-... -lin-..." Akira said, glancing over at her just as she was slipping her arms back into the sleeves and scritching the back of her neck.

"Mm?" she questioned absently, slipping a hand up her shirt so she could rub the spot on her ribcage where the underwire had _really_ gotten her. Uncomfortable as she was, brushing the fabric against her oversensitive nipples felt kind of amazing.

He opened his mouth for a couple seconds, then shut it. Then he swallowed hard and tried again.

She tilted her head.

He blinked once, twice, then croaked, "Um."

...'Speechless' was not a look she often saw on their fearless leader.

A slow, controlled inhale through his mouth, and he looked away, back down at his papers. Staring at them like he'd never seen them in his _life,_ he asked, "How... how are you feeling?" in a rasp.

"Kinda gross," she admitted, both thrilled at the reaction and very, very disappointed he'd looked away. "'M all sweaty and wet."

Akira stiffened, absolutely unmoving for five heartbeats. The swirl of warmth in the room mixed _intoxicatingly_ with the smell of the rain, the heady promise of it tightening the coil in her stomach and the peaks of her breasts, shivers and goosebumps and heat and _hunger_ —

And yet _still_ he stayed all the way over there.

"Um." He swallowed again and pointed to the door, movements disjointed. "Sh-shower..." Another controlled breath, and he continued, steadier, "A shower will... probably help. If... you want one."

Ow.

That crystal clear rejection _hurt_ , but she was clearheaded enough that it was only moderately painful, not waterworks-inducing like she might have expected.

Huh. Maybe the medicine was helping more than she'd have thought.

(He wanted her though, didn't he? Was there something wrong with her? Was she just not good enough? Was she an unacceptable mate, even for just a few days? If he wanted her, then why wasn't he _taking her?_ )

She couldn't keep the disappointment out of her hum as she stood. "Yeah, I think so."

He nodded, picking up the pencil again. Almost completely steady, he said, "The painkillers are probably going to wear off soon. There's food and another dose on the kitchen counter when you're done."

"...Thanks, Akira."

Another nod, and that was that.

* * *

One _icky_ walk to the bathroom later, Ann was peeling off her leggings and wrinkling her nose at the feeling. She kicked them to the side, but opted to keep the shirt for now; even half-drenched in her sweat, it still smelled good.

She was still half-hazy, dwelling more on the warm-velvet-fog smell settled into the cracks of the room than the process of turning on the shower—which was why it was a shock when the spray hit her arm like _ice._

She yelped, staggering backwards and trying to shake out the sleeve (pointlessly, seeing as the fabric was plastered to her skin), until she gathered her wits enough to figure out the source.

The digital temperature control for the shower was set to the very lowest it could go.

Which was odd, because Ann was the only one who used this bathroom, and it had been set at her preferred 'steamy but not scalding' temperature for almost as long as they'd been living in this house.

...Huh.

Well, a cold shower wasn't bad as far as ideas went, but she was looking for comfort right now, not a system shock, so she leaned over and dialed it back up to 'warm enough for relaxation' before removing the shirt and stepping in.

She felt better almost immediately.

She lost an unknown amount of time to just enjoying the sensation of hot water on her head and back, entertaining vague emotions that eventually consolidated into coherent thought. She washed away the worst of the grossness, then decided that a bath to soak away the rest would be nice. She'd been too busy to take one the past couple of days and she was feeling it.

Unfortunately, the bath didn't go quite as well as the shower had.

Oh, getting _in_ was bliss (scented salts and oils that tried to stick around even through the tub's filtering system eased away the tension that the shower hadn't caught), but then she soaked and dozed and got lost in her thoughts, and—

And those thoughts got stuck on Akira, as they so often did.

There were a lot of things about Akira to think about. From how gentle he was with her (not like she was spun glass, not like she was a ragdoll, just like she was a _person_ who he didn't want to hurt) to how he always listened to her (he _trusted her judgement,_ never treated her like an idiot when she didn't deserve it, coaxed her into talking to him and listened to everything she had to say with one of those fond not-smiles on his face) to how he was only ever as protective as she needed him to be (he trusted her when she said she could keep going and trusted her when she said she needed a break and let her tuck herself into his side when she needed a cover when they were walking around the city)—

(Carmen would always be free, but Ann Takamaki wanted a home more than _anything,_ and no matter how much she tried not to think about it, tried to find someone, _anyone_ else, Akira Kurusu was the only one she could picture making one with.)

—but what her foggy head was all too happy to present her with wasn't any of that.

Instead, it gave her his quicksilver hunter's smirk, the one that flashed across his face when he scented blood, the one that never failed to send her pulse racing.

It reminded her about the way his hands flexed when he tightened his gloves, thoroughly distracting in their grace and strength and unerring dexterity.

It generated all sorts of flash-fantasies about the firm, lithe muscle hidden under his loose clothing, the body she was held against whenever she ended up in his arms—little instances that had been fueling her fantasies for months now.

Unfortunately for Ann, her crush was hot.

She wanted that smirk, and she wanted it focused on her, pressed against her throat or her breasts or her thighs, and she wanted those hands, too. She wanted them smoothing from her waist to her knees, sliding back up her legs so he could spread her open. She wanted him to push those fingers inside her, flex them just like that, teasingly, not _enough_ but so so _so good._

Most of all, she wanted those loose-fitting clothes of his _off._

She wanted to bite the column of his throat, suck marks onto those painfully elegant collarbones, lap the contours of his chest just to feel them under her tongue. She wanted him to smirk at her like she was his next target while he popped the button of his jeans and pushed them down with a sinuous roll, revealing the V of his hips, waistband of his underwear folding under his palm, fabric sliding tantalizingly lower, lower, _lower_ until—

Her mind jumped ahead to that one thing her body needed the most right now—she wanted him to _knot her,_ solve this horrible loneliness and make this miserable ache _worth_ something. Wanted to feel filled, moored, _adored_ for as long as it took her heat to run through, high on his touch and sucked under by his passion—

She half sighed, half whined and sunk below the still-heated bathwater, her entire body throbbing in hot slick-empty-whimpery _want._ She could feel the chill of his absence even through the maintained heat of the bath.

She wanted him _here_ —inside her, preferably, but just... here. With her. She wanted _him._

Why wasn't he here?

**Author's Note:**

> this was one of the first shuann fics i ever started writing, heavily brainstormed with [brainbuddy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaRuX) over a year ago, and it has languished in wip hell ever since. hopefully having it all aired out will push me into f i n a l l y writing the smut in here.


End file.
